Operation: Wardrobe
by SociallyInept
Summary: Jean gets tired of Laura bumming everyone's clothes, and drags her to the mall one day.
1. 2:00 AM

So I'm starting another X-Men: Evolution mostly-AU fanfic involving Laura and Jean, however this one is mostly from Jean's perspective because I think that she's just Mary Sue enough to provide hardcore amusement to me, and hopefully through my amateurish writing to you.

All belong to Marvel and WB (I hate WB) except Jean's nightstand clock, because I got lonely and wanted credit for SOMETHING.

* * *

"Jean?" A voice whispered in Jean's dream. It didn't fit at all; her dream did not include anxious voices, just Scott and a hot tub. 

"Jean." It said again, a little less worried and a little more annoyed. She muttered something and flopped over in bed to the best of her abilities with the sheet cocooning her, burying her face in her thick red hair.

"G'way," she muttered, refusing to wake up for anything, not at this point in the dream. Why does this always happen when it's getting good? Oh yeah. Laura must have done something and wants me to bail her out when Logan finds out. Well, she can suffer this time. Now, Scott, where were we….

"Jean!" Laura's voice was louder this time, and broke Jean's hold on her nice dream completely at the same time a stuffed bear came down hard on her back.

"What do you want?" she asked, unburying her face from her pillow and massive morning hair. Morning? It's not morning yet, no one else is awake. She braced herself and looked at the clock. 2:19 AM.

It was all she could do not to start crying. The dream could have gotten so far.

"I um…did something." Laura said, glancing around their shared room anxiously for hidden eavesdroppers. "Come see."

"Everyone does things, what did you do that warranted waking me up in the middle of the night. I was having a pleasant dream."

Laura snorted in her 'I don't know why you're telling me this, you know I don't care' expression and hauled Jean to a sitting position in her sheets. Jean was glad she'd gone with the thicker nightgown instead of satin, it was chilly in the room. Late fall was beginning to chase the last of the warmth away, and in New York that meant making sure you really did have all the winter clothes you'd ever need because winter would hit with a vengeance within weeks.

Her younger roommate, dressed in an oversized sports shirt that likely really belonged to Sam or maybe once to Evan, and bike shorts that definitely belonged to Kitty, threw open the closet door and chucked Jean's denim jacket at her as she tried to wake up enough for coherent thought. The shoes thrown in her face helped.

"Laura…what did you do?" Jean asked again, noticing the girl's urgency.

"Shut up and come on!" was her reply. She slowly untangled herself from her bed, put the jacket and shoes on, and followed Laura down the halls of the mansion with blurry eyes and constant yawns. At one point Laura actually grabbed her arm and dragged her along.

They stopped in front of the laundry room. Well, slightly down the hall from the laundry room, because the room itself and the hall for ten feet in either direction was filled with perky little soap suds and bubbles and smelled clean and like lavender.

"Oh, why did you do this?" Jean whined, suddenly, horribly, fully awake. "Logan's going to jump all over you, and then the Professor will ask me why you weren't in bed- what happened?"

"I was curious," Laura said defensively, standing sedately beside the horrified nineteen year old. "I saw Ororo do some laundry a few days ago and figured I should start doing mine, since Logan said I need to start pulling my own weight around here-"

"But you only weigh, what, eighty pounds?"

"- So I decided to wash some of the clothes I've been wearing lately, but I forgot exactly in what order Ororo did things so I decided to just try remembering. I put the white powder in, and the blue liquid, and I wanted to see what happened in the washer so I didn't put any clothes in it. So I left the top open and I watched, and the next thing I know it short-circuited and there was a massive explosion of cottony-fresh detergent bubbles."

Jean couldn't help herself. She started giggling. It was incredibly funny, at two in the morning, how Laura could fight better than any professional, assassinate anyone in her way, survive in nearly impossible conditions- but couldn't do a simple load of laundry or use an oven. Her giggling took a slightly hysterical edge. She gave up a hot dream of Scott and a hot tub for this?

"Okay, we need to clean this up," she said after a few minutes. "Go get…mops. And buckets. And towels- not the nice ones in the bathroom, the other ones. And a few Hershey Kisses, I need chocolate. And I'll…start while you're getting all that." She looked at the slowly expanding sea of bubbly soapy detergent. "Don't forget the chocolate."

As Laura ran off, Jean rounded all of the runaway detergent up into a telepathic bubble and floated it outside into the forest behind the mansion, allowing her bubble to pop and the torrent of detergent to spread or evaporate in peace where it wouldn't get anyone grounded. About the time she returned, Laura did, laden with mops, buckets, towels, and a bag of chocolate.

They got to mopping up the hall and floor, trying their hardest not to slip, get stuck to unmopped spots, or get their pajamas wet.

"I want to make sure you realize that what you did was probably not very well thought out," Jean said eventually, "Although your idea was a good one."

"Well, I know that NOW," Laura said bitterly. "Can't you just whisper into my head 'Laura, don't even think about it' whenever I'm about to do something stupid like that? It would make living here a lot easier."

Jean laughed softly, trying to keep part of her mind open for students or adults prowling around the mansion. It looked like Rogue was in the kitchen again, but that was down another hall and they were probably going to beat her back to bed at the rate the cleaning was going.

They finished as the grandfather clock in the foyer began its toll for three o'clock. Jean sighed with relief and tossed the mop in a bucket.

"Bedtime," she said sleepily. Laura agreed. They cleaned up the evidence and went back to their- formerly Jean's- room, and got in their separate beds.

The comfortable silence grew as the wee hours of the morning drew nearer, and Jean was almost back in that hot tub, when Laura spoke softly once again.

"Jean?" she whispered from across the room.

"Yes?"

"Can you show me how to do that without explosions sometime?"

Jean giggled sleepily. "I think first you need your own clothes, but sure. Once we get you your own clothes and you quit borrowing everyone else's, yes, I will teach you to do your own laundry and pull all eighty pounds of your own weight. Now let me get back to the hot- I mean to sleep."

And thus, the idea was born, deep within Jean's subconscious.

She heard Laura snort sarcastically, but nothing else. Scott and the hot tub had waited after all.


	2. Victoria's Secret

Notice how I keep skipping around on the POV? I'm doing it on purpose. I just finished a 19-chapter story from one POV. One. Me. Blech. So this whole story is almost pure comedy as a sort of recovery method. Everything is Marvel's. No surprise there.

* * *

_Okay, the plan_, Jean told Jamie telepathically over breakfast a few mornings later, _is for you to get her into my van somehow, I'll telepathically pin her down, and we'll go to the mall._

_But I don't want to go shopping,_ Jamie thought back resentfully. Jean ignored him.

_I haven't quite worked out how exactly we're going to get her to stay calm, let alone get her to try things on, but I'll worry about that in a little bit. Perhaps if I bring a stunner from the Danger Room?_

Jamie rolled his eyes and took another bite of his toast. "Why don't you just ask her to go along so I can get some alone time?"

"That wouldn't work, she'd never willingly go along with that. I'd have to bribe her- hey, wait a minute…." Jean smiled confidently. "Jamie, you're a genius. Oh, and you're still coming, I refuse to let you wear clothes that don't fit you right anymore. So gather up your Gameboy or whatever it is you're playing these days and get in my van."

She stood up from the kitchen table and walked into the hall. Jamie sighed and went back to his toast, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

Jean popped her head back in the door. "By the way, when we're talking telepathically, that implies secrecy. Starting to talk out loud in the middle of the conversation ruins the whole point."

She left again. Jamie stared thoughtfully at the ceiling for a few minutes, and then casually got up and put a bag of popcorn in the microwave. This was going to be a good show.

Laura was hiding in the bathroom, figuring that since Jean had morals and a respect for privacy she wouldn't enter without permission. The conversation had been going well until Jean had said the s- word: shopping. Once she had heard that word she bolted down the hall, and although Jean had chased her Laura had lost her pretty quickly. There's something that a lifetime of intensive physical training has over a couple years of moderately difficult but spaced out to healthy intervals training.

"Come on," Jean said through the door. They'd been negotiating for nearly fifteen minutes, and Jean's voice, which was coming through the door below the doorknob, indicated that she had sat down. Laura was crouched on the lid of the toilet, listening out of sheer boredom. "It won't take that long, that's why Kitty doesn't know about this. It's only going to be you and me and Jamie, and since I'm good at eyeballing sizes you won't have to try a billion things on, and we'll get lunch while we're out. It'll be fun. And then we'll come home and I won't bug you about clothes again until you need new ones."

In the bathroom, Laura considered. She was starting to get tired of scavenging for clothes, and the professor and Logan had mentioned several times how it would be easier on everyone, especially herself, if everyone just wore their own clothes. And if Jamie was going it likely wasn't life-threatening, just slightly scary. But one thing had to be absolutely clear.

"What's in it for me?" she asked, moving off the toilet seat and crouching on the floor by the door, opposite Jean.

"A new wardrobe and lunch." Jean said hopefully. Laura was silent.

"And a Halloween-sized bag of candy." She added.

"Deal," Laura agreed, and unlocked the door.

A few feet down the hall, Kitty cheered. "Finally!" she said, and bolted into the bathroom past Jean and Laura, slamming the door. A few seconds later the shower could be heard, and Kitty's mostly in tune singing could be heard not long after that.

"If I ever turn into that, rewrite my brain," Laura muttered as she and Jean started walking towards the car where Jamie was waiting.

The mall was big. That was the first thing Laura had noticed, size being important to a short girl regardless of the expression concerning the value of it. The next thing she noticed was all the colors everywhere. There were giant yellow 'M's, blue circles with words concerning aged fabrics, pink lacy things, boring black and white letters that stood out due to their complete lack of interesting colors or designs, and more. Smells were overwhelming as well. Coffee and fried food was the most prominent, since they had entered near the food court, but the smell of large public places and large amounts of people of varying degrees of hygiene was also present.

Jean looked like she was in heaven. Jamie looked like he…wasn't. He kept his eyes resolutely on the ground in front of him, willing it to stay still so he didn't mysteriously develop six identical twins in the middle of the city mall. Laura tried to hide her growing fear that martial arts skill and child assassin extraordinaire or not, she wouldn't last five minutes in this place without an ambassador of some sort- namely Jean. She tried to move closer without actually moving any of her muscles at all and ended up tripping slightly.

Her redheaded mall guide looked at her funnily. "Are you okay?"

"No," she growled.

"Hey, I wasn't the first to trip," Jamie celebrated absently, staring at the floor in defiance, daring it to move from underneath his feet. So far it was busy cowering in fear.

"Our first stop is for necessities," Jean said, placing a surprisingly unmanicured hand on Laura's back and guided her forward, "which means we're going somewhere that might scare you at first, but I'll be right there. It'll all be okay if you trust me."

"Where are we going?" Laura asked warily, trying to resist and run away while she could. Jean guided her until only her photographic memory could tell her where they'd come from. Many dozens of stores were passed right by that had everything from paint easels to leather chaps in the window, but the one they stopped at was almost entirely pink. The most daring variety seemed to be pink with white poca dots.

Jamie, noticing the pinkish glare reflecting off the floor, which was sure to rebel as soon as he blinked, slowly looked up with an expression of pure horror on his face that matched Laura's perfectly. Jean stood between them, smiling serenely, one hand on each of their shoulders like a savior in disguise and a hungry look in her eyes.

"Is this hell?" Laura whispered, eyes wide with shock from the window display.

"No, silly," Jean said happily, "it's Victoria's Secret."

"Why are you doing this to me?"

"Revenge mostly."

"My eyes are burning out of their sockets," Jamie stated calmly, rooted to the spot. Jean began pulling Laura towards the doorway.

"Wait, we're going in there?" she asked.

"Yes, Laura. Just trust me. It'll be okay. If you cooperate this won't take long and then we can do fun things."

"I don't wanna," Laura whined, but followed Jean with a minimal amount of being dragged by Jean and pushed by Jamie, whose pre-teen enthusiastic curiosity had taken over disgust.

Jean rolled her eyes as from the other side of the stall as Laura calmly stated that the lady was touching her again.

"Deal with it, it's easy past this part."

She really had tried to think of other ways to figure out exactly what Laura's sizes were, but some things, even if you have the talent, shouldn't be eyeballed. And if the credit card in your wallet isn't yours, it's okay to splurge on higher quality goods, so against her better judgment, Jean had decided on Victoria's Secret.

As Laura whined out loud on the other side of the wooden door and Jamie wandered around studying the mannequins with a critical eye, Jean plotted- planned, sorry- the rest of the mission- trip, sorry again. She didn't have the heart, after this, to take the girl in Abercrombie even if it was her favorite store. She'd stick to Old Navy, the Gap, and whatever caught Laura's interest if anything did.

"Hey, why is this see-through?" Jamie called from the other end of the room, fingering something with a rabbit fur trim that cost around $6 per square inch.

Jean rubbed her temples, beginning to regret bringing him along. Especially since she considered Jamie the annoying little brother she never had. What had she been thinking?

Laura emerged grumpily from the stall, the harassed-looking sales lady following slowly.

"It's okay, I can take it from here," Jean said reassuringly. The lady looked relieved and scurried off. She turned to Laura.

"I don't really see you needing much other than sports bras, considering your lifestyle, but I'd rather play it safe. So…"

The next half hour was disheartening. Jean was throwing things over her shoulder for Laura to carry around while analyzing every minute detail of each one at the same time, and Jamie was running around taking pictures of some of the mannequins with Jean's camera phone.

Finally, finally Jean guided Laura to the checkout, where the sales lady (a different one with no visible conscience) eyeballed everything she scanned as if to say "Oh, yeah. This will definitely look good on you. In a million years." And then they got to go to the light, Jean dragging Jamie by the back of his shirt as he desperately took some last pictures as Laura ran ahead into the main hall and fell to her knees, raising her shopping bag-laden arms to the sky and glorying in the freedom and lack of artificial pink hues and translucent lace. Passerby stopped and stared.

"Okay, I can take a hint. You can get up now." Jean grumbled, succeeding in pulling her phone out of Jamie's hands and stuffing it back in her pocket.

"I went into a pink hell and survived!" Laura was crying out.

"Oh, shut up. You're short enough I could get you into something from Limited Too." Jean said, her patience fraying. Jamie and Laura smirked as spontaneous but identical plans appeared in their minds.


	3. Five Year Old Mentality

So my finals are over and I have all this spare time on my hands with very little to fill it with. It feels weird. I'm not sure what to do with myself.

The five-year-old girl thing in this chapter is a reference to something Professor X tells Wolverine in X2. And Laura's new wardrobe is based on what I see her in in various comic books.

* * *

It began with the slush Laura 'accidentally' dropped that splattered onto Jean's brown shoes when they had lunch in the food court, and continued when Jamie deliberately wandered off a few times into stores that Jean hated and annoyed older guys. Laura started eyeballing people, and Jamie told every fifth person, male or female, that they passed that his redheaded friend liked them. 

Jean was about to murder them both and hide the bodies in the maintenance closet. But she wasn't going to give in. Admitting that they were driving her mad would be admitting defeat. Jean was a redhead. She would never admit defeat.

"Alright you sweet little miscreants, we've got two more stores. I think- Jamie, get your butt back over here or Heaven help me I'll make you think you're a five year old girl for the next month!- I think that we can be on our way back to the mansion- I mean it, Jamie!- in about an hour or so. Sound good?" She told Laura. It wasn't a question. They were both laden down with bags from half a dozen different stores in addition to the Victoria's Secret bags, most of which actually contained clothes for Laura instead of some things for Jean (like new brown shoes to replace her stained ones). All that Jamie was carrying was a tiny bag from a jewelry shop with a bracelet Jean had liked in it. They figured he'd break or lose anything else.

The way it was unfolding, Laura's wardrobe would look similar to Rogue's- lots of dark colors, hardcore boots and accessories (especially wristbands, for some inexplicable reason), a noticeable lack of any color bright and cheerful. There was a lot of leather in one bag, most of which was a jacket or two and a few vaguely shirt-like things. Under normal circumstances Jean would object and stick some colors in there, but she was beginning to get the feeling that her two brats- charges- were tag teaming on her to make her day miserable.

Jamie was ignoring her and chatting up a girl that had more piercings than face, so Jean sighed and dove into his mind telepathically, studiously ignoring her conscience. He froze for a second, then relaxed and looked around with interest.

"Jamie, come hold my hand so you don't get lost," Jean said sweetly, and Jamie skipped over like a five-year-old girl. "If you're good I'll bake some cookies later, okay?"

Laura watched, fascinated. "What'd you do?"

"I altered his mind. Watch that I don't do it to you too. I know you were working together."

Her dark-haired head snapped forward and she ignored Jean's smug glances. The tables had turned once more, it seemed.

The last two stores went quickly and without incident, and Jean happily led the way to her van with half a ton of bags in one arm (being supported telekinetically a fraction of an inch above her arm so she would be able to use that arm in the future) and Jamie's hand in the other. He was skipping along every other step and humming a song about a teapot. Laura was a few feet behind then, watching Jamie's degrading show.

Soon enough everything was loaded into the car and Jean slammed the trunk door down with a sigh. Laura was maintaining a five-foot berth around Jean in case she randomly decided to zap her brain too, and Jamie was standing there trying to count his fingers.

"Okay, load up!" she said joyfully, glad that they'd all survived and it was only two in the afternoon. Jamie hopped into the car enthusiastically, and as Laura and Jean turned to get in the front seats they heard someone honk a car horn repeatedly. Someone else's car alarm went off.

Both girls ran back to the back of the van just in time for several hooting jeering boys to fly by in a pickup and send dirty puddle water from a short rain shower all over them and the back of the van. Laura looked calmly down at herself, noticing she was wet, but Jean gasped in anger and began to go after the boys, who'd turned at the end of the row of cars out of sight but not out of Jean's psychic mind.

"Those little-" she said something Laura hadn't known could come out of Jean's mouth, "This _was_ a new outfit! They shall pay!"

"Wait," Laura grabbed Jean's drenched arm with her own wet hand, "let's wait until they leave and do something illegal to their truck."

"Illegal? Why?" Jean asked. Muddy new clothes made her sense of morals fade a little, and muddy new clothes that someone else made that way made the sweet little nice side of Jean vanish almost entirely.

"Illegal gets the point across better."

"I think we'd get in trouble for that," Jean said regretfully.

"More trouble than you're already going to be in for turning Jamie into a five-year-old girl?" Laura asked sarcastically.

"Good point. Let's do it."

They strapped Jamie in the car with his Gameboy and set off across the parking lot to where the pickup truck sat, empty and undefended. While they did their work, Jean giggled and even Laura cracked a smile.

When they found the truck it had been in decent condition, if four tires, two mirrors, a windshield, and a steering wheel could be considered decent. When they left, Laura had used her skills with electronics from her assassin days to rewire the truck in a few special ways, and slashed her tires. Jean rotated things around and stuck a giant hardening clot of mud in the exhaust, because even when she was being bad it wasn't very impressive. The driver of the truck and his idiot friends would be very surprised when they returned.

On the drive home, Jean decided not to leave Jamie a young female. He blinked a few times and looked around.

"What happened? I thought we were at the mall." He said dazedly.

"We were," Jean said cheerfully. "You were getting annoying."

"She made you think you were a little girl," Laura said helpfully, twisting around in the passenger seat to watch his expression. Jamie said a few unnice things and glared grumpily at the girls.

"See if I ever go shopping with you two again."

Jean chuckled and glanced at Jamie in the rearview mirror as they turned up the drive to the mansion.

"You might feel differently now, but if you want to I could still braid your hair."

Jamie didn't reply, just folded his arms across his chest and stared out the window moodily. When Jean pulled the van into her spot beside Scott's convertible, he slid out of the van and ran inside, causing Jean to laugh again.

"He'll never forgive you," Laura said, trying to stifle a smile and failing as they picked up as many bags as they could carry and headed towards the door. Jean shrugged.

"Yes he will. It just might not be for a few hours. I think I'll still make him cookies after the Professor and Logan are done with me for misusing my powers."

"I can't believe I'm saying this without bribery, but I actually had a little bit of fun today."

Jean smiled. "A little?"

"Just a little. Most of it was when we were trashing that truck or watching Jamie sing children's' songs as loud as he could."

"How sweet."

They made it to their shared room without dropping anything fragile and dumped everything on the floor, and stood side by side staring at the pile.

"So…" Laura said casually.

"What?" Jean said, knowing that whenever Laura did anything casually that meant she was about to make someone mad.

"Let's do laundry."

The End


End file.
